[Movie] Crimson Peak: Love and Monsters 30

Buckle in, kids. I have thoughts.

First, a generally spoiler free quick review. (The spoilers will be coming hard and fast later, never you fear.) I’ve seen this movie twice now, and I like it more on second viewing than I did the first time around. Which is to say that I enjoyed it enough at time one to want to see it again, but this second time I was able to pick up so much more detail and richness, I’ve really gone from like to love.

Crimson Peak is a gothic romance in which innocent and violently orphaned budding writer Edith is romanced by Baronet Thomas Sharpe, overseen by his unblinking and intense sister Lucille. It’s obvious from the beginning that the Sharpe siblings are up to no good, the real question is how deep the corruption goes. When Thomas brings Edith home to Allerdale Hall, a house that’s a near-living embodiment of director Guillermo del Toro’s aesthetic and rotting austerely from the inside out, she must unravel the mysteries of Thomas’s recent past in order to survive her own future. She’s helped, for certain values of help, along in this endeavor by the numerous female ghosts that haunt Allerdale, but the true horror is not found with the dead, but the living.

The cast–Mia Wasikowska as Edith, Jessica Chastain as Lucille, Tom Hiddleston as Thomas–is what makes the movie. Edith acts as an excellent foil for Lucille and Thomas and a catalyst for internal struggle and development. The movie’s aesthetic has the richness we’ve come to expect from del Toro, an exemplar of the literary gothic that I personally love to witness but cannot stand reading, since I find the dark depths and layering visually appealing but impenetrable and normally overwritten in prose. With a less compelling cast there could have been a style over substance problem; the story of the movie and its purported mysteries aren’t really that twisty or terribly mysterious. The strength is in the characters and their relationships, and between the acting and visual delivery, del Toro has put together something that adds new depths to old tropes.

(And let’s face it, you could cast Tom Hiddleston as a Great Old One in a Lovecraft movie and I’d come out of it saying, “Well, but what about the inner life of Shub-Niggurath, Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Young?” Damn the man and his puppy dog eyes. He made me like Coriolanus, for fuck’s sake.)

And this is the part where we get into the SPOILERS. Do not continue if you wish to remain unspoiled. I’m going to break this up into loose, non-sequential sections.

TW for abuse, violence, and incest.

Genre

It kind of goes without saying that Crimson Peak wasn’t well-served by its marketing. Trailers got cut together like it was a straight horror/ghost movie, and Edith informs us in the first minutes of the film that actually, the ghosts are a metaphor, and it’s more a story with ghosts in it. I could almost feel some sympathy for the poor marketing department on this one, though, because what the hell are you going to market it as? Gothic romance isn’t a big enough film subgenre in the modern mainstream to have a readily established shorthand for advertising, and there’s no way in hell you could market this one as a straight romance. (Well, you could, but that would be a bad idea. And I bet they were trying to tempt more male audiences in with the promise of some horror, because everyone knows romance movies give men cooties.) Some real creativity would have been necessary from the distribution company, and wasn’t really exercised.

On the other hand, gothic fiction really gave us modern horror, and I would argue the elements that define the horror film genre are present, far moreso than the ones that tend to define romance. There is an evil force (Lucille) who is unreasoning and driven by id, and while she might be defeated at the end, audiences will know that the evil that she embodies still survives and thrives. There is no happy ending for Edith, just survival, and she is quite literally the “final girl.” Crimson Peak just doesn’t really meet most other expectations set up by our common understanding of horror; jump scares are few and far between, and the ghosts exist to lead Edith on her journey rather than try to harm her or even scare the audience.

 

That meta narrative, though (and oh, the foreshadowing)

The entire movie is framed as a book: Crimson Peak by Edith Cushing. That honestly only really hit me on the second viewing. But consider for a moment that this is the book Edith wrote instead of necessarily the book she has experienced. She tells us off the bat that the ghosts are a metaphor, for the past–and that they are. She states flatly very early on that she’d rather be Mary Shelley than Jane Austen–because Mary Shelley died a widow. By the end, Edith is set up to do just that. And she’s told by the first editor that she needs a romance plot: enter Thomas. Who then critiques her romance and then at one point says he hopes it does work out for the dark hero. (Poor Thomas, it does not.) But the romance of the book Edith is writing within Crimson Peak is an addition, an afterthought, not the main point. The thrust of the book is the ghosts of the past and their interaction with the characters. I tend to think of it as a warning right there that of all the elements in the story, the romance will perforce be the weakest.

Later when Edith and Thomas talk a bit more about her writing, and she tells him that characters speak and make their own choices (Edith, unlike me, is obviously a pantser), that’s an intensely important moment. On one hand, it’s Edith trying to tell Thomas yet again that he has free will (more on that later) and urging him to make his own choices and escape the past; on the other it’s an indication that the character Thomas in the meta narrative doesn’t yet have his fate written.

Also, I just love that Edith is a writer, and Thomas does his initial disingenuous sucking up to her by complimenting her writing–and then makes a performance of breaking her heart by insulting her book and calling her derivative.

 

Monsters, love, and abuse

Guillermo del Toro makes monster movies, and this one is no exception. The monster is Lucille, and she makes no bones about it at the end: “The horror was for love. Things we do for love like this are ugly, mad, full of sweat and regret… It is a monstrous love, and it makes monsters of us all.” This bald statement from Lucille is, by the way, part of why I think the Edith and Thomas love story feels more than a bit thin. The love story of this film isn’t that of Edith and Thomas, it’s that of Lucille and Thomas–which is what really does bring the horror. To a certain extent, Edith has to exist to be an outside observe on that fucked-up relationship, and to be the catalyst that changes it, but her own development as a character has a very different role.

Ultimately, what makes Lucille a monster, beyond the fact that she is the classic horror movie evil of an unreasoning being driven by id, is that she is an abuser–and is there anything more monstrous than abusing someone and telling them that it’s love?

I came out of my first viewing of Crimson Peak with the impression that Thomas and Lucille were basically an incestuous version of Lord and Lady MacBeth, a weak-willed man ruled by a strong and evil woman. Then the friend who I was with reminded me of one salient fact that’s easy to gloss over in the flood of other details: Mother Sharpe was murdered when Lucille was 14 and Thomas was 12. Lucille, almost off-handedly, mentions to Edith that Mother had “found out about us” before her murder. As in, found out that Lucille and Thomas were in an incestuous relationship. When Thomas was 12, or quite likely younger.

Just think about that for a moment, and then go wash your hands. I’ll wait.

We see throughout the film that in every interaction between the siblings, Lucille is the leader, Thomas the follower. She’s his older sister, after all. But consider beyond that, the way she deals with him:

  • Every time he expresses doubts or resistance to her plans, she takes pains to enforce his isolation from others. No one understands him but her. If people found out, he would be hanged. She always frames their relationship as Lucille and Thomas against a hostile world that wants to destroy them, and fosters his dependency on her.
  • When Thomas accomplishes something (getting his machine to work) she quashes his expression of individual talent by fiercely inserting herself into the equation (“I did this with you.”) and simultaneously cutting him off from his other source of praise by indicating she’s angry that he even wants to tell Edith anything. Nearly every time Thomas makes an “I” statement, she’s waiting to make it into a “we” statement.
  • One of the few times Thomas tries to stand up to Lucille, after she’s poisoned Edith yet again with the porridge, she says, “We stay together.” And they repeat together, “Never apart.” After she does her best to frighten and guilt Thomas, she says that he wouldn’t leave her, and his answer is, “I can’t. I can’t.” It sounds very much that she’s trained him to believe that he can’t do anything without her.
  • I tend to think that some of the ranting Thomas said when he was “breaking Edith’s heart” turned out to be a more of a window into him than he intended, when he got wound up–and he emphasizes that love is agonizing and painful, existence isolating and full of fear. He obviously believes that bitterness is necessary for survival, that gentleness will cause one nothing but pain in death–he expresses as much to Edith on multiple occasions. Much of this is no doubt drawn from his own bleak existence, but we see Lucille foster those beliefs in many ways, and then set herself up as the only escape from that loneliness and pain, the only source of comfort he could possibly have.
  • Lucille’s made Thomas promise to love no one else, to have sex with no one else, and does her level best to interrupt Thomas and Edith every time they might have a moment alone, watching them like a hawk through keyholes. Consider her utter fury when they’ve had a night together and both come back for a moment free of Lucille’s oppression. Thomas loving Edith at all, even in the frightened, anemic way he manages, is an act of rebellion against Lucille’s control that she does her level best to destroy and literally poison.
  • Lucille tells Edith that she took a lot of punishments intended for Thomas when they were children. While we never see her directly use guilt about this on Thomas, there’s little doubt it’s there as a weapon in her arsenal.
  • We do in fact see her manipulating Thomas with guilt when she decides they need to kill Allen. She hands him a knife and asks, “Is it going to be you this time?” The implication plain: hasn’t she cleaned up enough of your messes, Thomas?
  • Lucille takes complete ownership of Thomas, to the extent that when Edith catches them together and Lucille follows her, proudly justifying herself, she states, “This is who he is.”
  • Ever notice that Lucille and Thomas tend to dress the same, at least using the same colors? While it is an excellent visual shorthand for the fact that they’re siblings, it can take on a much darker light when you consider Lucille’s extremely controlling behavior.
  • We only see Lucille being violent with Thomas at the very end of the film, when she murders him in a fit of rage. But we see her display of temper toward Edith. It’s not a leap to imagine Thomas has been subjected to that as well, and considering they both grew up with a “brute” of a father and a mother who administered beatings, one imagines that’s the sort of thing that could cow Thomas very effectively.
  • It’s very worth noting that after Lucille murders Thomas, after a moment of looking lost and horrified, she immediately settles on Edith as the scapegoat. When she’s murdered people, she’s laid it at Thomas’s feet; she was doing it to protect him, because he was too weak to do it himself. What else has she told him he’s responsible for?
  • When Lucille does murder Thomas, he doesn’t even make a token attempt to fight her. He simply looks lost. And prior to that, he tries to convince her that they can all escape Allerdale hall together (the inclusion of Edith is the reason she murders him) because he cannot even now conceive of himself without Lucille.
  • Worth noting as well that Lucille begins to pull this routine on Edith before the truth is revealed. She offers an artifice of care on one hand (feeding Edith, showing her the library, telling her a bit about Thomas and Lucille’s childhood) while on the other trying to isolate her (“you have nowhere to go”), disorient her (using the pornographic picture to make her admit she and Thomas haven’t consummated their marriage), or terrify her. For that last, she utilizes a burst of violence (almost striking Edith with a hot pan of eggs) and then adroitly blames it on Edith and Thomas because they worried her.

Hey, here’s a link to an emotional abuse checklist.

I’d like to draw your attention to one other point that I didn’t notice until my second viewing, but when I did, it broke my damn heart. At the beginning, when Thomas takes Edith to the party and convinces her to dance with him, he says: “I’ve always closed my eyes to things that make me uncomfortable. It makes them easier.” Consider that for a moment in light of the abuse the man’s faced at the hands of his sister. And then consider the two times we see him in a sexual situation, with Edith he had his eyes open, and for all the animalistic sounds we hear leading to when he’s caught in the act with Lucille, he doesn’t.

The unique thing del Toro has done with this film has little to do with the gothic narrative, but rather the representation of male victimhood as existing, tragic, and not internally, innately different from female victimhood. (And at a time when movies/books like 50 Shades of Grey make the abuse of a 15-year-old boy by a grown woman into an awkward and unfunny joke.) This makes me question my own initial reaction, dismissing Thomas as a “weak-willed man” like Lord MacBeth. Would I have thought the same, had the roles of Lucille and Thomas been reversed–older male sibling controlling and sexually abusing younger female sibling?

Would you?

 

Butterflies and Gold

While Thomas and Lucille spend most of their time wearing black or dark colors, Edith spends most of her time  in yellow. When she’s not wearing a white nightgown that’s made of approximately six nightgowns worth of fabric, at least. One obvious visual shorthand for this is that Edith is seen by Lucille (and Thomas, initially) as a source of wealth. But what about warmth?

In act I, there’s the creepy scene in the park where Edith and Lucille find yellow swallowtail butterflies dying under a tree. Lucille says, “They get their warmth from the sun, and when it leaves them, they die.” There’s a lot of imagery in the movie with moths and candle flames, which can be read in a very obvious way as Edith’s attraction to Thomas.

But I think taking a step beyond that, consider that Lucille (in not actually the most scientifically egregious moment of the film, but hey, there are ghosts too so whatever) says that the black moths of Allerdale hall survive by eating butterflies. At the end of the film, when Lucille is adding a lock of Edith’s hair to her serial killer trophy collection (Lucille sure does match the definition of a serial killer, doesn’t she?) we see two containers that look a bit like lanterns on her desk; each one contains a butterfly. One of the butterflies is trying to escape, the other is fluttering on its back in its death throes. Visual shorthand for Edith and Thomas, I’d say, trapped by Lucille, the black moth that eats butterflies. (My friend Karen also points out that Lucille’s serial killer hair collection is pinned down in a way very reminiscent of an insect collection.)

This then makes even more sense of Edith’s golden wardrobe. Part of it is a visual connection to the yellow swallowtails, and part of it is her role as the “warmth from the sun” for Thomas. Edith views him as “a dreamer facing defeat” and brings her determination to believe in dreams (like her dream of becoming a writer) to bear on him.

We’re told again and again that nothing gentle survives at Allerdale hall; that’s why the black moths thrive there and not butterflies. Thomas tells Edith that she needs to develop a bit of bitterness if she wants to make it–bitterness he’s got on display in that moment. (And even more fully so in that rant he has at Edith when he’s supposed to be breaking her heart, like when he says, “Affection has no place in love.” More than a bit of his inner beliefs fostered by Lucille coming out there, hm?) But Edith refuses to take in that bitterness, and in fact believes in Thomas so fiercely that she, through sheer force of will, forces him to try to believe in himself. She convinces him that the narrative of complete isolation and danger Lucille has fed him all his life isn’t necessary the truth, and she’s the warmth that gives him enough strength to make a few faltering attempts to stand up to Lucille… before his demise.

 

Role Reversal

While Edith does play the general “innocent girl trapped by nefarious forces” role, there’s a bit of subversion of the hapless heroine in her that I appreciate immensely. I think there’s a lot to love in Edith that she refuses the narrative of corruption, and resists Lucille’s coercive behaviors with wit and determination. Strong foundation of having had a loving father, perhaps–Edith knows what love looks like, and knows it isn’t that. Because this isn’t a story about Edith’s fall to darkness or madness; it’s the story of Lucille as a monster and the destructive nature of her corrupt version of love. One could even argue that if anyone is having their psychology turned inside-out and being forced to question their life and existence, it’s Thomas; Edith is a strong and secure enough character that while she might be disoriented by the machinations of the Sharpe siblings, she never loses her footing.

Edith is generally a plucky heroine, and she plays a clever cat and mouse game with Lucille once she realizes something is very wrong, though she’s still always the mouse in that equation. But the twist on more standard narratives that this movie makes is turning the men into the victims and the women into both monster and hero. (By the way? Passes the Bechdel-Wallace test with flying colors.) Thomas is the hapless victim of a manipulative and abusive relationship and torn between two women, one of whom wants to control him and the other who offers him at least an illusion of hope.

And at the very end, Thomas makes an attempt to save Edith, asking her to trust him before he runs off to get murdered by Lucille. Then immediately after, Edith goes to the basement where Thomas has hidden Allen, who is badly wounded but alive. (Another small act of rebellion by Thomas, it should be noted, since he was ordered by Lucille to kill him.) Edith tells Allen to hide and, like Thomas did with her, asks him to trust her–only she delivers on that trust.

Also, please note that while Edith at times is hopelessly naïve, and she also does not immediately become an expert fighter after picking up a knife (thank you), she completes the entire final chase of the movie on a broken leg while half dead from poison, powered only by her strength of will and adrenalin. Edith is a credit to the Final Girl trope, who keeps rising and rising no matter how many times she falls. She’s a certifiable badass.

 

Ghosts

They’re a metaphor. We’ve already covered that they’re not supposed to actually do much other than represent the past and deliver warnings. (I’m still a bit puzzled by the Mother ghosts’ cryptic “His blood will be on your hands.” Then again, we also knew Mother was an awful person.) But we see three distinctive colors of ghosts in the film: black, red, and white.

The black ghosts are Lucille and Edith’s mother. My hypothesis is that the black ghosts are those tied to a place or person because of love. For Edith’s mother, it’s the love of her daughter; for Lucille, it’s her monstrous love of Thomas.

The red ghosts are all the women who have been murdered by Lucille. That seems… pretty plain.

The only white ghost we see is Thomas, who fades away after Lucille’s death. The impression I get is that he held on long enough to defend Edith, and then they simply let each other go. He won’t be walking around to haunt her. It’s Thomas’s redemption and Edith forgiving him.

But I’d love to hear other theories.

 

Ore

Ore is a rock that’s got a sufficient amount of minerals in it to be worth extracting for those components. The clay in this movie is likely red because it’s got a lot of iron oxide (hematite) in it. So, the clay could potentially be treated as an iron ore itself but it doesn’t “contain ore.” It contains iron oxides.

Dammit, Thomas. GEOLOGY. No wonder your mining business is failing.

30 thoughts on “[Movie] Crimson Peak: Love and Monsters

  1. Reply bagofcats Oct 26,2015 13:11

    Agreed, clay can be an ore, v.g. aluminun ore, bauxite, which can be found as haematite rich red(dish) clay, if I don’t misremember

  2. Reply andlifeisgrand Oct 26,2015 14:44

    “His blood is on your hands.” I took that to mean she inadvertently caused Thomas’ death as when Lucille realized he was in love with Edith she killed him. Also in the end when Edith is touching ghost Thomas his wound/blood is on her hand.

    Thank you for this fabulous analysis. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

  3. Reply María Oct 26,2015 15:18

    I think the red ghosts are red because they dumped the bodies in those clay pools in the basement.

    • Reply Jessica Uno (@JessicaUno1) Dec 10,2016 21:15

      Allan does make that random aside in the beginning of the movie about spectral photography and how certain minerals and materials can trap “ghosts” of people. That red clay must be pretty heavy. But then I didn’t understand why Thomas’ ghost was white and not clay-covered.

  4. Reply Kat Oct 26,2015 19:44

    Thank you for your analysis, just saw it tonight and wasn’t what i was expecting (i think you covered why in the marketing section) but i still enjoyed it! After reading this i am tempted to go back and see it again now i have this understanding :)

  5. Reply Veronica Gee Oct 28,2015 05:20

    Wonderful and thorough analysis, thank you! Now I have to go see it all over again. :)

  6. Reply redrascal1 Oct 30,2015 03:01

    Also…
    During the ‘incestuous’ love scene, Lucille had to use her hand on her brother so he was ‘up’ for it, so to speak – which means, he wasn’t enjoying it, she was actually molesting him.

    • Reply Rachael Oct 30,2015 10:03

      The real question in that scene would be if Thomas consented or is even capable of consenting considering the long history of abuse from Lucille. I’d generally caution against using specific sex acts as evidence for or against.

    • Reply Jessica Uno (@JessicaUno1) Dec 10,2016 21:17

      Rape and molestation victims can have physiologic responses to sexual contact, such as an erection, and they can even experience orgasm, but it doesn’t mean they wanted it or enjoyed it.

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  9. Reply meld21 Dec 2,2015 17:45

    So as I was going about the internet I saw a lot of people referring to the Lucille Thomas relationship as consensual and it was giving me a bit of a headache. As you rightly pointed out the absolute oldest he could have when Lucille began preying on him sexually (always a sad conversation when you say we’ll table the possible physical and emotional abuse for a moment) was 12 and the narrative suggests their mother didn’t catch the initial act, so possibly younger. You did a very lovely break down on how that kind of abuse can inform and shape adult relationships, meaning even though he’s the adult male, the one with perceived power in a sexual situation, he can still be coerced via grooming by his abuser. Same reason other victims go home to, lie for and even feel empathy for their abusers. This by no means absolves Thomas of all his crimes but it’s a pretty major part of his character and to pretend otherwise is dismissive.

    There’s a phenomena in film studies where they’ve found that people sorta ignore what doesn’t fit with what they expect from a narrative. Perhaps that’s why people are blanking this out, because female on male sexual abuse doesn’t quite fit their expectations for a film nonetheless jive with their world view. If it had been the opposite dynamic or Thomas’s older brother rather than sister, nobody would have missed that.

    Anyways this was an extremely long winded way of saying good job and thanks for making me feel a little less like am I the only one that heard that.

    • Reply Rachael Dec 6,2015 12:49

      I think a lot of it is the fact that it’s female on male abuse instead of the usual male on female abuse we see in film/theater. The test for me really was the question of how I’d think about it if the genders had been reversed… and at that point I realized I had initially been viewing the abuse through the lens of internalized sexism and misogyny.

  10. Reply John Dec 28,2015 10:28

    I guess I tend to think in a more positive vein. I hope that Thomas’s ghost will watch over her and protect her (redemption and forgiveness)

  11. Reply T Jan 29,2016 21:33

    Thank you for your in-depth thoughts on this. When I saw it the first time, I knew that Lucille was mentally ill (likely from the continued abuse of her parents) especially after Alan alluded that she was in a different institution and not a convent. I saw her as being controlling and manipulative with Thomas. Upon my second viewing and reading this review, I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis.

    • Reply Jessica Uno (@JessicaUno1) Dec 10,2016 21:13

      One could say the Sharpes’ parent’s abuse was also a form of “monstrous love” (as abusive partners/parents often try to justify it) that then made monsters of Lucille and Thomas. It made monsters of them all.

  12. Reply Lorena Mar 18,2016 18:29

    This was a great analysis – It’s so rare that a movie has even half the symbolism this one does.

  13. Reply E. Catherine Tobler Apr 15,2016 21:29

    Finally saw this film, so could finally read this review! Well done. :)

  14. Reply charlene ellen Jun 8,2016 21:50

    Yeah lucille really was evil and she was manpiulator thomas is between good and bad edith brought out the good in him lucille brought out the bad in him i really do think at the end thomas did love edith more than lucille thats why she killed him i dont think she really loved thomas she just like being in control of him and as for the incest relationship thats all thomas was use to but poor edith catching them edith was better for thomas there relationship was healthy and i could see the change in thomas when it was just him and edith together im sorry thomas died but he died protecting the girl he loved and i least he was honest with edith when edith says you lied to me he says i did you poisoned me he says i did and you told me that you loved me he says i do you just knew he was starting to fall for her the way he looked at her when they danced the way he looked at her in the workshop she was only wife he made loved to and he told her not to drink the cup with poison in it and he told lucille to stop it do we have to do it must we the looks he would give lucille and of course he had to been seen to look bad cause he didnt want lucille to know that he had fallen in love with edith and of course he died cause he love edith and he protect her even in his death he made sure she got away safe so yeah he did truly love edith

  15. Reply MDej Oct 13,2016 00:12

    Whats your analysis on the ring their mother wore and why lucilles hands are indestructible?

    • Reply Rachael Oct 15,2016 21:22

      Lucille’s got the horror movie monster thing where she basically is indestructible (until suddenly she isn’t) because it’s scarier that way. I think the ring’s kind of interesting… obviously the mother was quite abusive toward both the kids. So Lucille taking the ring and keeping it to her is probably a show of power, a trophy she won by defeating the mother. (Which is why she doesn’t like handing it over even temporarily, since it’s hers, and she keeps what is hers.) But symbolically, to me it reads that she’s basically taken on the oppressive, abusive role their mother occupied.

  16. Reply Ella Higgins Nov 7,2016 18:06

    Why do your think Thomas showed no emotion when Edith caught him and Lucille together?

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  18. Reply Pocket Peanuts Mar 12,2018 17:55

    Pks tell me if the mother of Edith was a good ghost, why did she appear in such a scary form? this movie does not conform to the law in which ghosts work. Bad ghosts feed off negative energy n the good feed off good (I watched the movie yesterday n thought this analysis this morning). If Edith’s ma was good, how was she able to touch her n communicate do well. She had a lot of energy considering Edith was scared if her, if she was a good ghost, fear weakens her, if bad, fear makes her stronger. So she got stronger and more forceful with Edith’s fear. Does this mean she was bad? Also, I don’t get whether the other ghosts were good or not n why couldn’t Thomas have killed Lucille first? Also, if I remember correctly tho.as said to lucilee that they have been dead for years? What was that about? I honestly thought they erent real people. So here goes it: papa of Edith should have done more to protect his daughter eg show her or tell her the bad secrets of the Sharpe’s. Two Allen should have spent more time with edith n proposed to her. Lucille should get a life n find a real lover Thomas should learn to defend wat he likes. If he really loved Edith, he should have defended her more I feel. I feel sorry for Allen n the father. As for the mother I feel she should’ve done more to warn her daughter n told her in another way maybe in appeared in a nicer calmer way, she seemed evil the way she appeared all black n quick n hoarse n stuff. Edith should have been more careful n the minute she heard the name crimson peak from Thomas she should’ve ran away, also when her mother warned her twice she could’ve researched way crimson peak is. I loved this movie, no lie. This is why I’m taking time to rant about it. Plsa tell me wat u guys think. The I think I said all I intended to lol

  19. Reply Patricia T. Apr 27,2022 14:40

    Excellent analysis! Sorry to join this conversation so late – the last comment being posted in 03/2018. However, since the comment before that was posted in 12/2016, I thought “What the heck.”

    I just saw the movie for the first time this weekend (I know,I am a little behind the times), and loved it. I have read several things about it online to address some of the questions i have about the story, which is how i came across your post. One thing I am curious about that I have not found a direct answer on is why Thomas chose Edith in the first place. She was not an orphan without family when he met her. It appears that he intended to propose the evening of her dinner party before her father called him and Lucille into his study to tell them to get out of town. I did not get the impression that they planned to kill Edith’s father prior to that confrontation.

    I initially thought perhaps that Thomas was smitten with Edith from the very beginning, but that theory seems to be shot once you see him preparing tbe poisoned tea for Edith with Lucille in the kitchen while Edith is taking a bath. He did not seem to have any love or remorse while preparing the poisoned tea at thay time, although it is interesting that Lucille asked him again in tbe kitchen why he chose Edith and he did not answer.

    The next thing you know, Thomas is completely smitten with Edith when she comes to his workshop in the attic. I assume all of thia takes place over a period of sjust a couple of months, because Thomas stated at Edith’s dinner party that he and Lucille were going back to England for the winter. So I ask you, what the heck? Did Thomas choose Edith because he was attracted to her but did not initially care enough about her not to kill her? If he did care, how could he be so nonchalant about initially poisoning her tea? Thoughts? Thanks in advance.

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